Nov. 15.
In the year 1812 there was om in a village in South China child who grew into a sickly auth and became a seer of vijons and a dreamer of dreams; 1 this respect resembling the rabian prophet who founded! ne religion of Islam. Some: christian books fell into his: ands and these gave a certain' ent to his thinking. He became: fortune-teller, founded a sect hich he called the Society of. jed and announced himself as: he second son of the Deity. bout 1850 he started a rebellion. gainst the Manchu dynasty, yok to himself the title of Heavenly King" and challenge d, with his insignificant wing, the power of the Chine empire, not then weakened by internal factions as it has since ecome, On any theory of probbility he, and they, should have een swept out of existence on heir first clash with the forces f the Government. But the expected happened and _he amed a series of unbroken local recesses, There is no event without a cause and the reason or the triumph of this, appar-ntly ill omened venture, is thas iven by a reliable authority, The Government attempted to nash the growing movement, ut owing to incapable officers useless troops they wel assily resisted and beaten, while heir severity to the innocent. epulation was a help to the ohel can The further course of the evement is thus described, They broke out from Yung-an Kueichow and went down the ang valley taking city after] ity. After capturing Yochow, the Tungting lake, they took n secession Hayang, Wuchang, Gukiang, Nanking, Chinkiang, hangchow and Soochow." This amazing success but the ood fortune of the Taiping army yas its undoing. The leader ped an Emperor and had his curt and harem in Nanking. The reverb says. "If the upper beam not perfectly horizontal th ower beams cannot be quite! straight" and the pseudo Emper-underlings imitated their chief. Our authority continues! The country was ravaged for. uppiles and reinforcements by: oth sides, for the imperialists vere even worse in their treatnent of the population than the obols, and the sufferings of the copie became more and more evere," We may conclude this view of things that are past y saying that Nanking was recaptured for the Government in 864; the leader of the rebellion. aving committed suicide some: hree weeks previously.
This is an oft told tale, but} t has a sequel and, maybe, a essen. Some three weeks ago he writer was invited to visit Chinese benevolent society vhich had taken to itself the ame of a certain world wide oranization. We shall call it the \ncient Order of Buffaloes hough that is not its true de-ignatian. The headquarters of he society are situated not a hundred miles from the Bund. Ve had a cordial reception and conversed for a time on the rules f the society and the rites and ceremonies by which its members vere admitted to: fellowship. Ttimately we were invited to visit the lodge room. This apartment. was arranged in a manner that partly resembled the guest room of a well-to-do Chinese home arid partly it was like a temple. At one end of the room there was a shrine with, a richly carved niche within which was a tablet to the spirit Hung Hsin-chun, the former "Heavenly King," and leader of the Taiping armies which so nearly set up a new dynasty in China some seventy and more years ago. On the wall hung a framed copy of an impression made from the seal of the T: ping leader which was found in his rooms when Nanking fell. It was sent by Tseng Kuo-fan to the reigning Emperor and fs stated to be now in the National Museum in Peking.
It is a principle in pedagogy that a story should carry its own moral. He is a bad teacher who has to say, "Now this shows us that, ete.,"" But as the moral of the above sketch is not too obvious we would beg leave to moralize for a moment. First we would ask, What was the force that carried the original contemptible little army of Taipings to victory at the beginning of their' career when everything, was against them and why did they fail when they had possessed themselves of half, and that the richer half, of China? And the answer is that it was a moral impulse. Rightly or wrongly, the original Taipings believed that they had a divine mission and the power of that faith, or fanaticism, call it which you will, carried them to victory. And we have seen that—sixty years after his death there are still people who pay reverence to the spirit of the man who tried, and failed to set up what was to him, the kingdom of God on earth, We live in a materialistic age and scoff at idealism. But, taking it even at lowest terms, idealism and enthusiasm e forces in life that have to be reckoned with. While they were idealists victory sat on the banners of the Taipings. When they had triumphed and become voluptuaries, their morale was lost and they fell a prey to their enemies.
To apply the moral to present day conditions, the weakest point in the position of the Northern militarists is that they have nothing they can offer to the nation. Their triumph means a continuance of military rule—such rule as we have had for the last few years which is the acme of misrule. There is/no moral impulse in their warfare. If between them they could enunciate a programme that, would offer a gleam of hope to the people of China, in the event} of their winning the war, it would do more for them than many battalions. Even if they did issue a proclamation promising reforms their words would be belied by the actions of their following for the! brutality of their soldiers has, turned the people against them. The Communists promise a mil-Iennium and the essential hollowness of the offer is not at] first apparent. Hence in two ways the success of their pro-ganda. Deeds not words are, wanted to withstand it.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.